THIS MONTH'S PAGE-TURNERS ON BUSINESS AND BEYOND

When schools and day-care centers shut down at the peak of the pandemic, moms stepped up. Between supervising remote school, doing housework, and preparing lunch, working mothers were now balancing two jobs and lots of cognitive labor, often causing their paying jobs to suffer. In this edition of Readers & Leaders—McKinsey’s monthly newsletter on the books business leaders are reading—catch a discussion on working-mother burnout with Reshma Saujani, interviews about why work isn’t working for women of color and how to achieve optimum performance at work and in life, and the month’s bestselling business books, prepared exclusively for McKinsey by NPD BookScan. Itching for more good reads? Check out McKinsey on Books for the latest, and to get Readers & Leaders in your inbox monthly, click here to subscribe.

AUTHOR TALKS

Millions of mothers have been pushed out of the workforce since the pandemic began, either downshifting to part-time work or leaving their jobs altogether to care for their children—and at disproportionate rates to their male counterparts. In a recent edition of Author Talks, we sat down with Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, to discuss double standards in caretaking and more from her new book Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think).

“This wasn’t just a pandemic story. For far too long, we have been juggling too much. We were sold a big corporate lie: that we could ‘girl boss’ our way and ‘lean in’ our way to the top. We have always participated in a workforce not only not built for us but that has been stacked against us. I think moms are tired. I think we’re burned out. I think we’re angry.” Watch the full interview.

IT BEARS REPEATING

“When [my son] was born, he was what they call cortically blind, cortically deaf, and unable to have voluntary movement. … I took six months off. We found some really incredible people who had these crazy theories based on neuroplasticity. … We believed that the brain would change, and it took a long time, but at some point, I’ll never forget, we did airhorns in his ears and you saw his eyes move.”

—Scott Keller, McKinsey senior partner and coauthor of CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest, in a video on how his son impacted his life’s work.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Deepa Purushothaman discusses why work isn’t working for women of color: “The idea that corporate America is a meritocracy really sets women of color up to struggle. It really sets us up to believe that we have to perform and behave in a certain way to rise, and I think that doesn’t allow us to be our full selves. It doesn’t allow us to bring the unique properties that we have and the power that we have to the workplace.’” Watch the full interview.

Rich Diviney shares SEAL team strategies for optimum performance: “In the team setting, it’s not at all about competition. In fact, it’s the opposite; it’s about vulnerability. The best—the highest performing—SEAL teams, for example, all did what we were able to do because we were all incredibly open to displaying our vulnerability.” Watch the full interview.

Catherine Price wants you to go have fun: “We typically think of fun as something that we can only have or experience when things are already going well, but what I’ve come to realize is that the opposite is true. Actually, fun can boost our resilience and our spirits in a way that makes it easier for us to cope with whatever life may throw our way, whether it’s a global pandemic or anything else.” Watch the full interview.

BUSINESS BESTSELLERS TOP

Welcome the first days of spring with this month’s top business bestsellers in eight categories, prepared exclusively for McKinsey by NPD BookScan, and explore the full lists on McKinsey on Books.

BUSINESS OVERALL

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (Penguin Group USA)

BUSINESS HARDCOVER

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (Penguin Group USA)

DECISION MAKING

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (Hachette Book Group)

ECONOMICS

The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale by John A. List (Random House)

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way To Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (Penguin Group USA)

WORKPLACE CULTURE

Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson (Penguin Group USA)

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

Caste (Oprah's Book Club): The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)

SUSTAINABILITY

Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take by Paul Polman and Andrew Winston (Harvard Business Review Press)

BOOKMARK THIS

If you’d like to propose a book or author for #AuthorTalks, please email us at Author_Talks@Mckinsey.com. Due to the high volume of requests, we will respond only to those being considered.

—Edited by Molly Liebergall, an editor in McKinsey's New York office

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